Citizens of the Mount Vernon area have been notified of yet another public hearing. The subject: how best to develop what has come to be known as Bock Farm, along Parkers Lane, across from Mount Vernon Hospital. Notice here that I used the word, develop. The hearing is not to entertain different ideas, to pick the public brain, as it were. It is to consider a proposed high-density development that will permanently change the face of Mount Vernon.

The last time we suffered through one of these public hearings, it was to take Supervisor Stork to task for trying to deceive us. At a previous hearing on the subject, only five people showed up and, I was told enthusiastically by Mr. Stork’s assistant, Christine Morin, that all five were in favor of the proposal for the site. The proposal then included four monolithic structures resembling office buildings, each with thirty-two living units, a total of 128 units. This translates into, potentially, 250-275 additional motor vehicles injected into otherwise quiet adjacent neighborhoods and already overcrowded roadways.

Mr. Stork’s deception included, but is not necessarily limited to, his staff placing a solitary public hearing notice on Hinson Farm Road, tucked back in the weeds and brambles, behind parked cars. The notice was not placed along the heavily-traveled Parker’s Lane where residents actually could see it. Consequently, as I emphatically pointed out to Christine, no one was present at the hearing to object to the proposed development because no one knew about it. Mr. Stork is responsible for this political boo-boo because he is the boss. Furthermore, Christine assured me, again enthusiastically, that she had checked on the sign personally, which means her boss also knew about its placement, so we know this spectacle was no happenstance.

Mr. Stork’s desperation to approve this project is two-fold: tax revenue from 128 living units and to help the owners of Bock Farm, his friends who strived to get him elected. Notice, if readers and residents are willing and able, that nowhere in the twenty- or thirty- or fifty-year-development plan Supervisors have laid out for Fairfax County does there exist the phrase, or perhaps even the philosophy, “Quality of Life.” “Pack ‘em in” seems to be the prevailing attitude.

I grew up in Hollin Hills. My family was the fifth family to move into that neighborhood in the early 1950’s. I know it like the back of my hand. When jetliners were introduced to National Airport in the late 1960’s, the departure and arrival routes took these jets and their deafening engines directly over my house, my windows and doors literally shaking from the noise. Years of complaint after noisy complaint were lodged to the so-called noise complaint office to no avail. Hollin Hills became the dumping ground for the privilege of elected office.

I raised my children in Hollin Hall, a neighborhood which seems to have become the bane of Mr. Stork’s existence. I like this neighborhood, as do my neighbors. I would like to stay here and strive to preserve what is left of it. My children have fond memories of the neighborhood, its residents, and of the surrounding environs. Now that the rich and the well-connected have commandeered Hollin Hills, the aircraft arrival and departure routes simply have been moved slightly south, and are now over Hollin Hall. Since no one of political or economic consequence lives in Hollin Hall, we now have become the convenient dumping ground for the noise from Congress’s personal airport.

The spectacle Mr. Stork is promoting at Bock Farm will quickly bring it’s potentially 250-275 cars directly up Shenandoah Road through Hollin Hall, right through my back yard, and through the front yards my many of my neighbors. People will need to eat and shop, so the new residents of the Bock Farm debacle will be drawn to the stores closest to where they live: Hollin Hall Shopping Center. So, once again, Hollin Hall has become the dumping ground for politicians’ special interest. The rude awakening for me is that, despite their rhetoric, supervisors simply do not care.

When the 7-Eleven corporation bought out the High’s corporation years ago, responding to valid concerns about the store attracting disreputable elements, Fairfax County Supervisors promised terrified residents of Hollin Hall that the police would be a veritable fixture in our neighborhood. For several years after, the police actually were just that, visiting the 7-Eleven frequently. Years later, the police rarely visit the store. As an aside, apparently neither residents nor supervisors could have anticipated the massive litter that would eventually be tossed along Shenandoah Road by lunch-time lawn crews.

Additionally, we have a constant problem with motorists speeding through Hollin Hall and running stop signs. Some of these motorists actually are residents here. We have petitioned Supervisors for speed controls and the police to catch the stop-sign scofflaws, but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Police officers, by their own admission, have the written law, of course, but then their own interpretation of this law as to what constitutes a stop and what constitutes speeding, and the two share little similarity. Consequently, their meager efforts have had marginal impact upon the community. Now that the County is planning to direct even more vehicular traffic through Hollin Hall, how can we expect either Supervisors or the police to be any more responsive or responsible?

I was not present at the last hearing on this issue, but I suspect that at some point someone suggested developing the farm into a senior center. I say this because within two weeks of that hearing, I discovered that the name Hollin Hall School, which had occupied its rightful place on the building for the last sixty-five years, had discretely been removed, then replaced with Hollin Hall Senior Center. Gee, I wonder who paid for that little political maneuver. This singular event signifies Mr. Stork’s determination not only to develop the farm in his own image, but to alter the public consciousness. You see, those in power understand that if they can control what people see, they can more easily alter how people think.

Now, bear in mind that, in the Mount Vernon area, the schools are overcrowded. Belleview Elementary School itself, after a massive renovation and addition several years ago, was just delivered fourteen, possibly as many as twenty, temporary classrooms that now occupy the school’s playground. Just up the hill on Fort Hunt Road, Hollin Hills Elementary School was not being used years ago, so the County, in its infinite shortsightedness, sold it off to a developer who converted it to Paul Spring Retirement Center. Under the circumstances, how convenient would it be today if the County had held onto that school?

So now, Belleview Elementary School is crowded beyond capacity. The County recently completed an addition to Bucknell Elementary School, a structure so large it now dwarfs the original school building. The coveted Waynewood Elementary School is equally overcrowded. Hollin Hills Elementary School no longer exists because the County supervisors, who knew full well that this area was growing and that we would need the school again someday, sold the land, probably to their friends.

Let’s move south down Fort Hunt Road to Hollin Hall Elementary School, which now Mr. Stork insists through both his word and his deed, is no longer a school. At the same time, the County continues the search for what is rapidly-decreasing available land on which to build yet more schools. In the midst of all of this confusion and despair, empty words and poor planning, it leaves me struggling to comprehend who is running this operation.

The prudent plan here would be to develop the farm into a senior center, making such a center more geographically central, thus accessible to that many more seniors. Then, we could keep the Hollin Hall Elementary School building at the ready for when we need it again as a school. But, this is the prudent plan.

Still, the public would do well to come to grips with the reality that these deals between County and developer are sealed behind closed doors. Written into the development plan is enough flexibility so that when local residents finally are allowed access to the idea, enough adjustments can be made to the plan to provide the ordinary citizen the appearance of compromise. However, little will have changed.

Public hearings are required by law, but ultimately are simply a vehicle to assure peoples’ continued investment in the myth of democracy. This is the way the system works. Thus, Supervisors go away happy, the developer goes away happy, and in his ignorance, the ordinary citizen also goes away if only marginally less upset, convinced somehow after all his effort that his voice has been heard, that he has had some tentative hand in a process which ultimately is out of his control. The job of the politician then becomes to convince this now-shell-shocked ordinary citizenry that what was just descended upon them is a good idea.

Mark my words, in light of the massive in-filling development underway in the Mount Vernon area, there will come a time sooner than people might wish when this area’s remaining schools will become so overcrowded that the County will be forced to commandeer the newly-dubbed Hollin Hall Senior Center building for use once again as a school. Where will seniors go then? What artifice will Supervisors employ at that juncture to quell the potential uprising?

I, for one, have grown weary of scrutinizing, and as a result, becoming suspect of every breath, every utterance, every stroke of the pen of these public officials. Yet, the public remains steadfast in its determination to continue living under the delusion that these people work for us, when, in fact, they work for the corporations, for special interest groups, and for themselves.

Doren K. Weston